A much more congenial group of visitors was the political circle that gathered round Sunny’s cousin Winston Churchill. In the absence of other forms of entertainment, there was constant conversation with Winston – the greatest talker of them all. Consuelo may have complained in a letter to a friend that his talk was tiring but he also ‘represented the democratic spirit so foreign to my environment, and which I deeply missed. Winston was even then, in his early twenties, tremendously self-centred and had a dynamic energy.’ He also possessed, it seemed to her, a near-photographic memory. No sooner had he read Taine’s History of English Literature – at Consuelo’s suggestion – than he was able to recite from memory pages he had barely scanned, or so it seemed. But even without Winston, the conversation never dried. ‘We talked morning, noon and night, but we also knew how to listen. There was so much to be discussed. Politics were interesting, but so also were the latest novels of Henry James and of Edith Wharton – Americans who had the temerity to write of England and the English.’75
With Blenheim’s recent misfortunes reversed, Sunny finally felt able to think about building his own political career. He was, of course, a Tory (Conservative Unionist). He had been made a Privy Councillor in 1894, and had made his maiden speech in the House of Lords in August 1895, shortly before he left for Marble House. He created a good impression in the view of Lord Lansdowne, who read his speech beforehand. ‘You got through capitally – that was the general verdict,’ he told his nephew by marriage. ‘If you had done much better, you have done too well for a beginner.’ He had some criticisms, but ‘with these exceptions the speech was quite a sweep.’76 The Duke now sought a role in government and in January 1899, soon after Ivor’s birth, he was invited to become Paymaster General by Lord Salisbury. His cousin Winston wrote to congratulate him remarking: ‘I am afraid I am vy ignorant of its duties and powers and their scope. But in any case it is a position of great dignity and will be a prelude to positions of greater responsibility.’77 Sunny held the position, which nominally gave him responsibility for the government’s cash reserves, until 1902. However, his responsibilities were not so onerous that they prevented him from going out to South Africa on Lord Robert’s staff soon after the start of the Boer War in 1900.
Daisy, Princess of Pless, who knew the 9th Duke well, astutely remarked that he was too thin-skinned for politics.78 His political career would be eventually cut short by the Liberal landslide of 1906. In the meantime Consuelo offered loyal support, at least in public. Though the political outlook of Duke and Duchess later diverged sharply, she can be seen in photographs on the platform at the great Unionist rally held by the Duke at Blenheim in 1901, for instance, where thousands of supporters gathered in the courtyard to hear speeches from the Duke, Arthur Balfour, and Joseph Chamberlain, leader of the Liberal Unionists. As the Duke pointed out later, rallies in the days before mass ownership of motor cars were difficult to organise, and it was no small achievement to gather crowds of thousands in the courtyard, who then had to be addressed without the benefit of microphones. Lunch was provided for 100 MPs in the great hall, while 3,000 delegates ate in tents.
When Consuelo, Balfour and Chamberlain entered the tents they were greeted with loud cheers, though it was Chamberlain who received the greater ovation and who seemed not to mind the rough and enthusiastic greeting he received, in spite of his dapper appearance. From the platform Consuelo could see in the distance the statue of the 1st Duke of Marlborough, standing aloft on his ‘Victory Column’: ‘[As] we listened to my husband and Mr Balfour’s addresses I could almost detect a satisfied smile on John Duke’s countenance. It was somewhat different when Mr Chamberlain spoke of social measures that in the distant future would still leave the Duke on his column but might drive his heirs from the palace.’79
Sunny’s developing political career also made it imperative that the Marlboroughs finally resolved the question of a permanent establishment in London. Each year, finding a house to rent became more of an irritant and an apparent barrier to political progress. ‘I only had to mention our wish for my father to promise its fulfilment,’80 wrote Consuelo. The problem was that most of Mayfair and Belgravia was already owned by the great landlords like the Duke of Westminster or Lords Portman and Cadogan. The Marlboroughs finally found a solution by buying the freehold of a site in Curzon Street by Shepherd’s Market and building their own establishment, which they would eventually call Sunderland House – though they had first to demolish a chapel on part of the site, which caused some controversy and was also considered unlucky.
‘The last quarter of the nineteenth century and the years before the First World War witnessed a remarkable flowering of ceremonial and spectacle … the aim of those who stage-managed them was to create feelings of security, cohesion and identity, in an era of anxiety, uncertainty and social dislocation,’ writes David Cannadine.81 Consuelo’s position as Duchess of Marlborough gave her a ringside seat at many of these great Edwardian pageants. Queen Victoria’s funeral at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, in 1901, was particularly enjoyable. The service itself was magnificent. The stalls of the Knights of the Garter were occupied by the German Emperor and a dazzling array of kings, queens, ambassadors extraordinary, Indian princes, Colonial dignitaries, generals, admirals and courtiers. Consuelo wore the prescribed deep black mourning and crepe veil, which rather suited her, and it had the effect of extracting what she describes as a ‘rare compliment’ from her husband who remarked: ‘If I die, I see you will not remain a widow long’ – a conceit which suggests that he was more of his father’s son than he cared to acknowledge.
Consuelo later reflected that the funeral of Queen Victoria was a moment when it truly appeared that no other country in the world had an aristocracy so magnificent, nor a civil service so dedicated, which is precisely what was intended. The great doors were flung open as the royal cortege mounted the steps, a boom of distant guns and clanging swords the only sound other than the funeral march, until Margot Asquith broke the reverential silence with a quip. Consuelo thoroughly enjoyed herself at the reception in the Waterloo Chamber afterwards too. Her beauty bloomed in her twenties after the birth of her two children, and so did a streak of vanity which surfaced in her memoirs years later. ‘I found myself so sought after by many public men – Arthur Balfour, George Wyndham, a man of great personal charm who was then Secretary of State for Ireland, St John Broderick, George Curzon, Mr Asquith and others – that I felt that Marlborough’s compliment had perhaps been deserved.’82
Between the death of Queen Victoria and the Coronation of Edward VII, the Marlboroughs travelled to Russia at the invitation of Tsar Nicholas II to take part in the court celebrations that traditionally ushered in the Russian Orthodox new year. The Duke, who ‘had a weakness for pageantry’ (by which Consuelo meant dressing up, showing off and swaggering about) flew into something of a panic about the extent to which the Marlboroughs would stand comparison with the celebrated magnificence of the Russian court: ‘Every detail had to be subjected to his exacting scrutiny,’ she wrote. ‘Court uniforms had to be refurbished, and in Paris I bought some lovely dresses. A diamond and turquoise dog-collar was ordered as a special parure to be worn with a blue satin gown. We had heard much about the fabulous furs of Russian nobles; it is true my sable coat was fine, but I had only one.’83
An entourage of magnificent persons was assembled to go with the clothes and jewels. To ‘ensure an added prestige’, the beautiful and cultured young Duchess of Sutherland was invited to accompany them, as well as Count Albert Mensdorff, then attached to the Austro-Hungarian embassy in London, and another friend, Henry Milner. The rest of the retinue was made up by valets, maids, and a security officer to safeguard the jewels. In letters home to her husband, Millicent Sutherland wrote that the Marlboroughs were good, if formal, travelling companions. The Duke always wore his top hat, and Consuelo constantly changed dresses – all lovely – even on the train.
Consuelo’s first impressions of Russia in 190
2 were far from favourable. The white plains in the moonlight were depressing; the hotel in St Petersburg reserved for visiting foreign dignitaries did not compare to the great hotels of Paris; the windows were sealed shut in winter making her feel imprisoned; the wind-swept avenues were lined with modern buildings in doubtful taste. But gradually, the hospitality of the great aristocratic Russian families won her over. They were entertained by Countess Olga Shuvalova in her palace with its own private theatre; they drove in open sleighs to islands on the frozen Neva where they danced to Tzigane music into the early hours of morning; they went to the ballet, where, according to tradition the danseuse-en-tête was the Tsar’s ex-mistress, while the other ballerinas were distributed round the Grand Dukes ‘as part of their amatory education’. Consuelo felt that they had taken a step backwards into an eighteenth-century society far less rigid than turn-of-the-century England.
The grandest occasions in St Petersburg were the great court functions and both duchesses dressed for the huge New Year ball in the Winter Palace with some apprehension. The stairs of the Winter Palace were guarded by Cossacks, with hundreds of footmen in scarlet liveries. ‘I have never in my life seen so brilliant a sight,’ Millie Sutherland wrote home. ‘The light, the uniforms, the enormous rooms, the crowd, the music, making a spectacle that was almost barbaric in splendour … They seat at supper nearly four thousand people!’84 When Consuelo was asked to dance a mazurka by the Tsar’s brother, Grand Duke Michael, it bore no resemblance at all to the version taught at Mr Dodworth’s classes for the children of the ton of New York. ‘“Never mind,” he said when I demurred, “I’ll do the steps.”’85 (Grand Duke Michael would be shot by the Bolsheviks in 1918.)
At a second more exclusive ball, the Bal des Palmiers, both duchesses felt the contrast between the wealth indoors and the poverty outside acutely. Inside the palace, the jewellery worn by aristocratic Russian women made even a Vanderbilt heiress feel inadequate. Outside, it was difficult to avoid the sight of long queues of hungry people, and beggars freezing in the streets, ‘all the want and penury of the peasants and this strange show to keep up the prestige of the autocracy of one gentle, quiet little man’,86 wrote Millie Sutherland in amazement. Both Marlboroughs thereon teased her gently by dubbing her ‘D.D.’, for ‘Democratic Duchess’.
At the Bal des Palmiers, Consuelo sat beside the ‘gentle, quiet little man’ at dinner (though she only set down her conversation with Tsar Nicholas much later when she wrote her memoirs). It was protracted, comprising ‘soups, caviar and monster sturgeons, meats and game, pâtés and primeurs, ices and fruits, all mounted on gold and silver plate fashioned by Germain’. She noted the Tsar’s close resemblance to his cousin, the Prince of Wales (later George V); she was struck by his youth; and she was impressed by the enormous difficulties he faced. ‘When I asked him why he hesitated to give Russia the democratic government that was so successful in England, he answered gravely, “There is nothing I would like better, but Russia is not ready for democratic government. We are two hundred years behind Europe in the development of our national political institutions. Russia is still more Asiatic than European and must therefore be governed by an autocratic government.”’ Consuelo gathered that he saw his ministers every day but separately, to prevent any one of them becoming too powerful. He also seemed afraid of the Russian people, their ‘ignorance, their superstition, their fatalism’.87
Both Consuelo and Millicent Sutherland thought that the Tsar was a good man, but weak. After the Russian Revolution, Consuelo also thought his analysis of why Russia was not ready for democracy was fundamentally correct, and that the person who was more to blame for the end of tsarism was the Tsarina, Alexandra Feodorovna (Queen Victoria’s granddaughter), who rudely failed to grant an audience to the Marlborough party. The conversation also took a slightly more alarming turn when the Tsar asked Consuelo why Millie Sutherland had visited the writer Maxim Gorky when he was in temporary internal exile. The English party may have been honoured guests, but that did not protect them from being watched by the secret police.
Both Marlboroughs were good at ceremony. As the years went by, they came to find the Prince of Wales’s Marlborough House set dull, and slowly withdrew. In spite of this, Consuelo was asked to act as a canopy bearer for Queen Alexandra at the coronation of Edward VII, a great honour which set the final seal of approval on her performance as an English duchess. Indeed, the photograph of Consuelo in her velvet robes trimmed with miniver, her dog-collar of pearls and diamond belt has come to stand as a symbol of the great international marriages of the Gilded Age. The Duke had also been invited to act as Lord High Steward, which meant that he would have the critical task of carrying King Edward’s crown into Westminster Abbey.
The coronation, which had been postponed once when the Prince of Wales was struck down with appendicitis, was held in a shortened form on 9 August 1902. The Duke and Duchess both arrived as instructed at 9.30 a.m. at the west door, having travelled to the Abbey in the Marlborough state coach and been cheered through the streets of London by crowds who evidently mistook their crimson livery for royal scarlet. They separated at the west door, since the Duke had duties elsewhere, leaving Consuelo to process up the aisle alone, in a solitary but splendid moment. There was a very long wait, though Consuelo’s hunger pangs were relieved by the bar of chocolate she had hidden in a pocket, and much amusement was provided by the rows of peers who sat opposite the peeresses, many of whom had not bothered to check beforehand whether their ancestral robes and coronets actually fitted or simply did not care. In some cases the robes were too big or too long, and there was much uneasy male hitching of hemlines; and when the solemn moment came for the King to be crowned and the peers placed their coronets on their heads, at least one slid downwards till it rested on an aristocratic chin.
The image of Consuelo in her coronation robes may have come to stand for a generation of American heiresses married to English aristocrats, but during the coronation itself she found herself overwhelmed by the pageantry to the point where all sense of her American self left her. ‘The trumpets were blaring, the organ pealing and the choir singing the triumphant hosannas that greeted the King and Queen. The long procession was in sight – the court officials with their white wands, the Church dignitaries with their magnificent vestments, the bearers of the royal insignia … [which included the Duke bearing the King’s crown on a velvet cushion], the lovely Queen, her maids-of-honour holding her train, and then the King, recovered, solemn and regal. I felt a lump in my throat and realised that I was more British than I knew.’88
But the feeling was short lived. Two events pierced the solemnity of the occasion. The first was the anguished look Queen Alexandra shot at Consuelo when the Archbishop of Canterbury anointed the Queen with sacred oil. Some of it ran down her nose and there was nothing either of them could do about it. The second was the great shout of acclamation from the assembly at the moment when the King was crowned which seemed downright shocking. It may have been an ancient rite, binding crown and aristocracy, but at that moment divine majesty appeared to have given way to something more earthly. ‘But then I was not English,’ she wrote later, ‘and could not feel the same pride in the tradition of unbroken lineage the act of crowning symbolised.’89
At the end of 1902, the Marlboroughs sailed to India to attend the greatest Edwardian pageant of them all: a durbar in Delhi organised by George Curzon, now Viceroy of India, to mark the accession of Edward VII. They travelled out on a P & O liner with sixty other guests, all friends of the Curzons, for a ceremony which came to epitomise imperial pomp. The first durbar was held in 1877 by Viceroy Lord Lytton to mark Queen Victoria’s new title as Empress of India. Curzon, who was convinced that the ‘oriental mind’ was susceptible to ‘barbaric splendour’, was determined that his ceremony would surpass Lytton’s in every way. His meticulous planning, insistence on controlling every detail and profound sense of the past made him by far the greatest of all Edwardian impresarios. He saw
the ritual of the durbar in terms of ‘visual advocacy; the opportunity to make a case, to impart a message, to impress an audience, to reinforce a sense of identity and of community, to cement those links between past and present about which he cared so dearly’.90 Even by Curzon’s exacting standards, the Delhi Durbar of 1902–3 was a masterpiece of its kind, though it came at a cost of over £200,000. ‘From the moment of our arrival in Bombay, where Marlborough and I were guests of the Governor, events as glamorous and gorgeous as those narrated in the tales of The Arabian Nights enchanted us,’91 wrote Consuelo.
The durbar lasted almost two weeks, involved more than 150,000 people and hundreds of Indian princes from all over the subcontinent. An infrastructure of more than seventy camps was created around an amphitheatre which was the focal point of the ceremonies, requiring ‘railways, water supply, sanitation, lighting, telephones and postal services to be installed; the grounds had to be grassed and ornamented, and the amphitheatre constructed. Sofas, arm chairs, tables, book cases, pianos and pictures had to be provided.’92 A special train brought the Viceroy’s guests to this great camp. ‘A double row of beautiful tents lined a central avenue. We had a salon as ante-room, two bedrooms behind, and a smaller room which held a round tub. Marlborough’s valet and my maid lived near-by and a native servant brought hot water for our ablutions, and breakfast hot and delicious at any hour.’93
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